The Princess of Pop remembered being a kid back in Louisiana on her cousins’ wide wooden swing, climbing so high that with one release of the chain links she might sail off into the clouds...
Miriam and Dorothy are just getting to be best girlfriends again. They hadn’t spoken for a while over a silly disagreement about some money Dorothy had loaned her. Then Charlie, Miriam’s second husband, got drunk and shot himself.
Her lips were in that famous downward turn, her eyes lowered and dreamy. She brought a delicate hand to her forehead and pushed a white-blond, perfect curl away from her cheek. Hers was the saddest face I’d ever seen.
Growing up on a farm was a lot like being a fighter pilot. Most days played out in tedious monotony interlaced with brief moments of sheer terror. This was never more evident than the afternoon my brother and I set out to plunder the bee tree and return to the house with their comb victorious.
I don’t think he gets enough sleep. I get up in the middle of the night to pee, and I can hear the white noise of the off-air channel as the static strobes blue and the speaker hisses behind his door. This is what growing old in Lansing is. The television takes you to bed.
She asked me if I could help out with a friend of hers. He had problems with alcohol, women, and drugs. I already knew about the women, because every pretty girl in town seemed to have slept with him.
I don’t know what happened at the ice cream parlor after I left, but later that day while I put a load of sheets and towels into the Maytag at Mount-Wash-More, Soldier Boy watched me, leaning against a dryer, talking into his wrist-watch.
I am in the boss's cabin listening to him, and suddenly I feel my face flee. It is as if it is drifting sideways, toward the wall, or toward the translucent board that is riveted to the wall for scribbling thoughts.